Creating Judaism

On page 33 of Creating Judaism there is a picture of the sanctuary of Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, at 1 East 65th St., which the congregation generously supplied. I recently had an opportunity to actually go into the sanctuary, which has recently been redone (the reconstruction is documented in the museum there). The picture does not even begin to do justice to the majesty and awe of the sanctuary, which outstrips many of the gothic cathedrals of Europe. From the enormous soaring roof to intricate mosaic windows to the imposing dais in front of a vast number of pews, it is quite a structure. The virtual tour can be seen through the congregation’s website, but I highly recommend a visit.

Incidentally, at least on the day that I visited (no religious services were being held then) there was an American but no Israeli flag on the dais. It has become common for modern synagogues to have both, and I suspect that the absence of an Israeli flag hearkens back to the Congregation’s history without making a modern statement about the importance of Israel.

The newspapers are reporting the discovery of what appears to be Herod’s tomb in the fortress that he built, Herodium. Archaeologists discovered pieces of an elaborately carved sarcophagus, but no bones or inscriptions indicating who was once interred within it. Nevertheless, the identification might well be correct. At the end of book 1 of his work the Jewish War, Josephus mentions Herod’s burial:

So there was an acclamation made to Archelaus, to congratulate him upon his advancement; and the soldiers, with the multitude, went round about in troops, and promised him their good-will, and besides, prayed God to bless his government. After this, they betook themselves to prepare for the king’s funeral; and Archelaus omitted nothing of magnificence therein, but brought out all the royal ornaments to augment the pomp of the deceased. There was a bier all of gold, embroidered with precious stones, and a purple bed of various contexture, with the dead body upon it, covered with purple; and a diadem was put upon his head, and a crown of gold above it, and a secptre in his right hand; and near to the bier were Herod’s sons, and a multitude of his kindred; next to which came his guards, and the regiment of Thracians, the Germans. also and Gauls, all accounted as if they were going to war; but the rest of the army went foremost, armed, and following their captains and officers in a regular manner; after whom five hundred of his domestic servants and freed-men followed, with sweet spices in their hands: and the body was carried two hundred furlongs, to Herodium, where he had given order to be buried. And this shall suffice for the conclusion of the life of Herod. (Whiston translation)

It is not very surprising not to find the golden accouterments described by Josephus; grave-robbers would have taken these years ago.

The real interesting story here is not the possible discovery of Herod’s tomb but the fact that it entered mainstream media. Historically, the discovery of Herod’s tomb doesn’t really tell us anything; we don’t need more evidence that Herod once lived. Nor do modern religions venerate Herod; he’s made out in many Jewish and Christian texts (perhaps a bit undeservedly) as quite the villain. So why should anyone care?

That people in fact do care about all kinds of archaeological discoveries tangentially related to the Bible and their own faith commitments is both puzzling and fascinating in its own right. Is this a case of craving some material, palpable connection to the past, and/or is there an element of “contagion,” as if being in the presence of such material artifacts brings us close to greatness? (This reminds me of the many houses with plaques that George Washington once slept there.) The Biblical Archaeology Society publishes two periodicals appealing to this desire, but it is the desire itself that deserves further reflection.

I recently read A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Jewish Culture and Contexts) by Martha Himmelfarb. Himmelfarb, a professor of religion at Princeton University, highlights the tension between ascribed and attributed authority, that is, whether the claim to “authority” (that can also loosely be understood as including having the status as a covenanted people of God) is based in biological ancestry or by acts that remain open to all. Himmelfarb argues that Jews during the Second Temple period struggled with tension, and ultimately different groups “solved” it in different ways, although the preponderance of non-sectarian evidence points toward a preference for the importance of merit. She then suggests that the Rabbis, responding to early Christian claims that they, by virtue of merit, were the new Israel, reemphasized the importance of biology.

What interests me here is the inherent tension between these two modes of authority and the way that all later Jewish communities attempt to solve it. Is Israel a “kingdom of priests” based on their genes or their (present or past) actions? What are the material and historical conditions that tilt a community in one direction or the other? Most modern Westerners are inherently more comfortable understanding authority as theoretically open to all; the racial component can cause discomfort.

This makes me think about “Jews by choice.”  According to classical rabbinic and later halakhic texts, non-Jews can become Jews and in so doing are equivalent to Jews in every significant way; they in fact are said, legally, to lose their former identity and family ties (hence raising a question of whether a man who converted to Judaism can marry his mother or sister, who ceases to have this relationship to him post-conversion).  Yet in antiquity, Jewish converts typically marked their grave epitaphs with the designation “proselyte” - even in death they were not simply “Jews.”  (This might complicated Himmelfarb’s thesis that the emphasis on biology was a rabbinic response to Christianity; it might have been a more popular preference for other, unclear reasons.)  Today, quite unscientifically, I notice a similar trend in the tendency of Jews by choice to identify themselves as such, and Jews by birth to note (although not necessarily in any negative way!) the converts among them.  It would be interesting to explore further why this might be.

How should a Jew observe Passover now that Jerusalem is in Israeli hands? And who is to say? Some rabbis and their followers want to resume the paschal sacrifice:

A few years ago a new Orthodox Yeshiva, “YCT,” opened in New York in order to promote a more “modern” approach to Orthodoxy. Last week an ultra-Orthodox periodical ran a scathing attack on YCT. A long, unofficial letter was published in response. According to one of the more interesting parts of the letter:

The Hareidi world and the Modern-Orthodox world differ as to whether there should be any interaction between Orthodox rabbis and clergy from the other Jewish denominations. This issue has long divided various segments of the Orthodox community and revolves around the tenuous balance between working together on programs and causes on behalf of the Jewish people and the fear that Orthodoxy is legitimizing heterodox movements and approaches to Judaism. Even within the Modern-Orthodox rabbinic which has generally taken a more liberal approach to this issue there are differences of nuance and perspective on this question. Thus, some Modern-Orthodox rabbis will not participate in joint board of rabbis, but might join together in a occasional lecture series with Reform or Conservative rabbis, while others will not even do that, while still others (especially beyond the narrow confines of the NY area) will join in on joint boards. These issues have bedeviled the community for half a century and there are and always have been various practices within the Modern-Orthodox community. For example, while some talmidim of the Rav did not sit on any joint boards, there were others, also talmidim of the Rav, who did in fact do that and rightfully remained in good standing in the Orthodox community.

YCT Rabbinical School as I understand it, while emphatically rejecting a hard pluralism that comes close to relativism, strongly feels that interaction and cooperation, without blurring distinctions can be beneficial for the greater good of the Jewish people and ultimately spreading the message of Torah to Klal Yisrael as a whole. We are driven by the Rav’s vision of a shared community of fate as well as Rav Lichtenstein’s clarion call some two decades ago which went even further:

With respect to reducing polarization, I am convinced that the best approach does not call for minimizing differences but rather for maximizing community. Basic ideological differences exist and to blur them is both irresponsible and anti-halakhic…We can , however, place greater emphasis upon the factors which without denying difference, transcend it; upon confraternity, upon historical and existential ties, upon essential components of a shared moral and spiritual vision, upon elements of a common fate and a common destiny. We should not only concede but assert that, whatever their deviations, other camps include people genuinely in search of the Ribbono shel olam. (Leaves of Faith, Vol. 2: pg. 360)

We also are animated by the teachings of Rav Kook who dialectically saw some partial truths and kernels of holiness and insight even in movements and ideologies that on the whole were in conflict with the basic world-views of fidelity to traditional Torah outlooks that he espoused. A full-blown treatment of the sof-pluralism of Rav Kook is beyond the scope of these short comments. I would also refer the reader to the excellent articles by Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm “Seventy Faces” in his collection Seventy Faces Vol 1 and R. Shmuel Goldin “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along: An Orthodox Rabbi’s View on Pluralism” in the Edah Journal 1:1 which nicely articulate many of the perspectives that guide us at YCT. In short, the approach adopted by the Yeshiva has very good Orthodox pedigree and is one that while open to critique should not be caricatured or demonized.

A copy of the full letter can be found here.

The controversy within Lubavitch (Habad) hasidism over the last rebbe, Menahem Mendel Schneerson, continues. Was he the messiah? Or more? Haaretz has the story:

The Lubavitcher Rebbe as a god
By Saul Sadka (Haaretz

“Joy to the world the Lord has come.”

This misquote from Isaac Watts, along with a link to a Chabad Web site, appears on a billboard. Not a real billboard, but a Photoshopped one that appears on the Web site of a Chabad activist in the U.S.

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled “Rebbegod” and refers to Schneerson as “Rebbe-Almighty” among other adulatory sobriquets.

Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

“The Rebbe and God are not the same thing exactly, but I do not object to people thinking that they are the same thing.”

He recounts an incident in which he confronted his teacher - a senior Chabad rabbi from the former USSR - as to why he would not openly declare the Rebbe to be God. According to Sokolowsky, the senior rabbi jokingly warned him: “there can be many gods but only one Moshiach.”

[…]

[The following are questions asked of students in Safed.]

How do they view the connection between Schneerson and God? “The Rebbe is not something different from God - the Rebbe is a part of God,” says a British teenaged student.

Does this not ‘idolize’ Schneerson, in the literal sense? “We cannot connect to God directly - we need the Rebbe to take our prayers from here to there and to help us in this world. We are told by our rabbis that a great man is like God and the Rebbe was the greatest man ever. That is how we know he is the messiah, because how could life continue without him? No existence is possible without the Rebbe.”

Would they go so far as to describe the Rebbe and God as one and the same, as some extreme Messianists have done? “No, some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as the creator.

“They say that God was born in 1902 and is now 105 years old. You can pray to the Rebbe and he will answer, and he was around since the beginning of time. But you must be careful to pray only to the Rebbe as a spiritual entity and not the body that was born in 1902.”

Does the Rebbe have a will of his own? What if the Rebbe and God disagree? “That is a ridiculous question! They are not separate in any way.”

So the Rebbe is a part of God. “Yes, but it is more complex than that. There is no clear place where the Rebbe ends and God begins.”

Does that mean the Rebbe is infinite omnipotent and omniscient? “Yes of course,” an Argentine student says in Hebrew. “God chose to imbue this world with life through a body. So that’s how we know the Rebbe can’t have died, and that his actual physical body must be alive. The Rebbe is the conjunction of God and human. The Rebbe is God, but he is also physical.”

This story was brought to my attention via Paleojudaica.

NPR has a story about the writer Naomi Regev riding public transportation in Jerusalem:

Writer Naomi Ragen says she did not want to start a revolution from her bus seat or become the Jewish Rosa Parks. She just wanted to get home. An observant, Orthodox Jew, Ragen was on the No. 40 bus line, headed to her house near Jerusalem, when an ultra-Orthodox — or Haredi — man told her to move to the back.

“I was astonished,” Ragen recalled. “And I said ‘I’m not bothering anyone. You don’t have to look at me, sit next to me — but as long as this is a public bus, I will sit where I please, thank you very much.’”

Ragen says the harassment grew worse at every stop. Soon an even more aggressive, bearded ultra-Orthodox man got on and commanded her to move. He weighed about 300 pounds and hovered over her like a sumo wrestler, she says, his long, black frock and wide hat in her face.

“And he started screaming and yelling,” she said, telling her to “move to the back of the bus — or else.”

“My reaction to that was I looked him in the eye and said ‘Look, you show me in the code of Jewish law where it’s written that I’m not allowed to sit in this seat and I’ll move,’” Ragen said. “‘Until then, get out of my face!’”

Ragen may have been the Haredi’s worst target: The feisty 57-year-old New York-born novelist and feminist has signed on to a new legal challenge to the de facto gender-segregation on more than 30 public bus lines in Israel, and the restrictions randomly enforced by men and self-styled “modesty patrols.”

“I call this the Taliban lines,” Ragen said. “They can call it whatever they want. But that, to me, is what they are. They’re the Taliban lines and there’s no reason we should have them in Israel. I think it’s important that women have taken a stand and gone to the Supreme Court with this and said, ‘We’re angry and we’re not going to take it anymore.’”

Ten years ago, as part of a pilot project, two bus lines dedicated to the ultra-Orthodox community were launched.

Today — unofficially — there are more than 30 gender-segregated Haredi bus routes. In many cases these buses are half the price and the only lines running between some cities and neighborhoods. They look like every other public bus: There are no signs telegraphing that they’re aimed at the ultra Orthodox.

The full story is at NPR.  The story illustrates the tensions, apparently increasing, between Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews and non-Haredi, even modern Orthodox, Jews within the State of Israel.

I recently read an essay by Shalom Auslander, “Playoffs: Things that are prohibited,” in The New Yorker, January 15, 2007, pp. 38-43. Auslander offers a funny, poignant, and idiosyncratic view of what it is like to struggle to engage the modern world (and especially the Rangers) as a conflicted Orthodox Jew.